PD-Trak™ New Product Development Software
by PD-Trak Solutions

PD-Trak™ is an integrated project management, portfolio management, and resource management software solution. It can be used for development of discrete and process-oriented manufactured products, software development, and service development. It provides project management, gate review, and product development tools and a common document repository to support product teams as well as portfolio management software functions, multi-project resource management and performance measurement tools for executive management.

PD-Trak's functions include the following:

Portfolio Management Software
PD-Trak™ maintains a portfolio of approved and unapproved projects. It uses both financial metrics and a scoresheet of user-defined criteria to prioritize projects. It provides graphical representations of the portfolio mix with bubble charts, pie charts and product roadmaps. A separate portfolio can be maintained for new product development (NPD) projects, six sigma projects, and IT projects. The portfolio can be viewed by product line or business unit or consolidated across the enterprise.

Pipeline Management / Resource Management Software
The pipeline management and resource management functions help analyze and plan project resource requirements to determine availability of resources and consider actions to respond to resource conflicts assuring a smooth flow of projects through the product pipeline. Resources can be planned by resource type early in the project and then more detailed resource planning and assignment by individual can be developed as the project is fully planned out. Various options to address resource constraints can be flexibly modeled with this resource management software.

Project Management Software
PD-Trak™ provides an extensive set of project management tools to help the project team plan, coordinate, and manage the project to the defined phase/stage-gate process. This project management system is integrated with Microsoft Project and creates a project plan based on the defined product development process. The system provides additional functions to manage the project including risk management planning, action item planning and statusing, and templates for individual functional planning (e.g., marketing plan, manufacturing plan, software development plan, verification or test plan, etc.). The software's performance measurement capabilities include a wide range of metrics to measure performance of the project, the product, and the overall project portfolio.

New Product Development Process Software
PD-Trak™ allows you to define your product development process and manage to that process. You start by defining your process' phases / stages, gates. You then define the tasks, document outputs, and responsibilities by phase. Finally, you create document templates to define the content of required documents and what needs to be done to create that content. The system guides teams through the NPD process with task assignments, task statusing, and deliverable templates. Multiple processes can be established, e.g., new product, product line extension or upgrade, technology development, contracted development, etc.
The PD-Trak™ product development software may be configured to match any NPD process that comprises a serial set of project stages or phases separated by gate reviews or other key milestones.

We provide our NPD Process-in-a-Box™, a set of processes based on best practices that can serve as a starting point to define an improved new product development process. Our pre-defined processes and templates are available for hardware/hardgoods products, software products, service products, and six sigma projects. Multiple processes can be supported, e.g., standard development process, a streamlined process for product line extensions/modifications, OEM proposals, technology development projects, etc.

Stage / Phase-Gate Software
PD-Trak™ is based on a stage/phase-gate process. The software coordinates the dates and required information for gate reviews and ensures that appropriate information (e.g., a business case, marketing plans, etc.) is considered at each gate review and throughout the project. PD-Trak™ provides a customizable scoresheet to evaluate each project at each gate review.

Ideation or Ideas ManagementSoftware
PD-Trak™ captures suggestions and ideas for new products on a New Product Ideas list, provides a rrepositoryto collect documentation and information related to the product idea, and provides a simple screening method for product management or executive management to use to evaluate product ideas.

Product Lifecycle Management Software or PLM Software
The PLM software functions provide a repository and a limited document management capability primarily for non-technical project data as well as technical data if no other PLM solution exists. Each Project File serves as a repository for the project team's documents. Functions exist to easily add documents and capture meta data to organize and sort various types of documents.

Product Development Software Tools
Product development software functions provide tools to support product and process development including bills of material, integrated supplier planning, quality function deployment (QFD), target costing, failure modes and effects analysis, design for manufacturability guidelines or checklists, and control plans.

Team CollaborationSoftware
PD-Trak™ facilitates team collaboration with contact lists, team calendars, shared documents, task statusing and collaborative tools. A common Project File that contains all of the project team's documents and works in progress further facilitates collaboration.

Six Sigma Software and Tools
PD-Trak™ contains templates and tools to facilitate six sigma projects. The tools include a cost/benefit analysis, cause and effect analysis, root cause analysis, a SIPOC diagram, stakeholder analysis, pareto analysis, process mapping, quality function deployment, failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA), and control plans. A separate portfolio can be established to support and manage a portfolio of six sigma improvement projects.

For more information, contact Clarosys today.

Jim Nelson
Ph. (612) 618-0662
jim.nelson@clarosys.com